COMMAND OF EVIDENCE

The sat Reading Test requires students not only to derive information and ideas from a text but also in some cases to identify the portion of the text that serves as the best evidence for the conclusions they reach. In this way, students both interpret text and back up their interpretation by citing the most relevant textual support. The following passage excerpt and related pair of sample questions help illustrate this concept. (Note that for convenience, the lines cited in the first question in the pair are highlighted in the passage excerpt, and the lines cited in the second question in the pair are reprinted below each answer choice; in an actual test, students would have to refer back to the passage, which has numbered lines. See also the complete passage in Appendix B for the full context in which these skills are measured; additional sample questions associated with this passage can be found in that appendix as well. The passage is also presented in the text complexity examples below.)

The pair of questions is based on a passage from a text in the Great Global Conversation.

. . . The North Carolina ratification convention: “No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity.”

“Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community,” said Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, number 65. “We divide into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.”* I do not mean political parties in that sense. The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation behind

impeachment; but impeachment must proceed within the confines of the constitutional term “high crime[s] and misdemeanors.” Of the impeachment process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that “Nothing short of the grossest offenses against the plain law of the land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great as to overgrow party interest may secure a conviction; but nothing else can.” [. . .]

Adapted from a speech delivered by Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas on July 25, 1974, as a member of the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives. In lines 48-53 (“Prosecutions . . . sense”), what is the most likely reason Jordan draws a distinction between two types of “parties”?

A) To counter the suggestion that impeachment is or should be about partisan politics

B) To disagree with Hamilton’s claim that impeachment proceedings excite passions

C) To contend that Hamilton was too timid in his support for the concept of impeachment

D) To argue that impeachment cases are decided more on the basis of politics than on justice

Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to the previous question?

A) Lines 13-17 (“It . . . office”)

It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office.

B) Lines 20-24 (“The division . . . astute”)

The division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge—the framers of this Constitution were very astute.

C) Lines 55-58 (“The drawing . . . misdemeanors’”)

The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation behind impeachment; but impeachment must proceed within the confines of the constitutional term “high crime[s] and misdemeanors.”

D) Lines 65-68 (“Congress . . . transportation”)

Congress has a lot to do: appropriations, tax reform, health insurance, campaign finance reform, housing, environmental protection, energy sufficiency, mass transportation.

The first of the two questions asks students to analyze a distinction that Barbara Jordan draws in her speech between two types of “parties”: the informal associations to which Alexander Hamilton refers and formal, organized political parties such as the modern-day Republican and Democratic parties. The best answer to this question is choice A. Jordan anticipates that listeners to her speech might misinterpret her use of Hamilton’s quotation as suggesting that she thinks impeachment is essentially a tool of organized political parties to achieve partisan ends, with one party attacking and another defending the president. In the above excerpt of her speech and in the larger reading passage, Jordan makes clear that she thinks impeachment should be reserved only for the most serious of offenses — ones that should rankle people of any political affiliation.

The second question asks students to determine which of four portions of the passage provides the best textual evidence for the answer to the previous question, thereby demonstrating their command of evidence.

In this case, choice C provides the best support because the lines cited in choice C help emphasize Jordan’s point that impeachment is so serious that its use must be reserved for high crimes and misdemeanors, not for merely political gains. In these sorts of questions, students make explicit their reasoning as they read and comprehend text.